Conclusions
I've had to do some backtracking in my ideas in researching and sorting through the wood from the trees for this introduction. I've had to blow the cobwebs off old ideals and beliefs and accept a different version of what I believed were the origins of Northern Soul, as I'm sure many others will have to also in reading this.
But I have to say I've found that, in someways, the scene "in the beginning" sounds as complicated as it has always been. Northern Soul fills a void, it fills a need for a minority of people who fail miserably at being sheep and following the herd. They don't fit into the mainstream box of following "popular" trends.
So had it not been for the cocktail of (at the time) alternative music freaks (meant in the nicest possible way) like Roger Eagle, the rise of the Modernists that became the London Mods, which in turn allowed for the Manchester "Soul" Mods to emerge, through two brothers owning and opening a small dump of a club "all night" in Manchester, and allowing Roger to play "his" music where the patrons partook in the taking of "high-energy" drugs, and of course last but not least, the incredible wealth of "unknown" talent who spent every dime they could find to record simply the most amazingly "low-budget", and to a certain extent, natural raw amateur productions (on a shoe string) that have become today's "meat and two veg" for having a hit song, ........ we wouldn't be here today recollecting the origins of the longest surviving underground music scene in the world!
And to get to this point, we have to give our thanks to those early pioneering and spirited few, that because of their history, background and mixed culture and struggles, created Blues; created Rhythm; created Jazz; that somehow developed into Doo-Wop, that was then picked up on and covered by people who we dare not mention, that miraculously opened a locked door that gave the people that were in truth, the most deserving of success, an opportunity that perversely did not materialise. But had it not been for the smallest glimpse of their dream becoming a reality, life as we know it musically, would be today something I simply cannot and could not imagine without all the "unsung" heroes who "we" revere and adore.
Northern Soul - Keep The Faith!
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